


Refraction

by meltokio



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 21:30:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10862478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meltokio/pseuds/meltokio
Summary: The first time she sees her face – red-ringed eyes and bare muscle – she screams.





	Refraction

The first time she sees her face–red-ringed eyes and bare muscle–she screams.

No noise echoes from that nightmarish mouth, her control over her new form was rudimentary at best. She had only just mastered walking after growing accustomed to the greater height. She was so far behind Reiner and Bertolt and they weren’t willing to let her forget it. She was new; a replacement. Their friend had died and this girl had taken his place. This strange, quiet girl with the hawkish nose and big blue eyes.

Features that hadn’t fit her face before now seem better suited on a titan’s visage. She has never thought herself pretty, despite her mother’s kind words, but now she is hideous.

A nightmare.

The ground quakes when she falls to her knees beside the pond, sending a flock of birds in a nearby tree into frenzied flight. Her hands cover her face, shielding herself from her own reflection. Her limbs are long and ungainly and don’t respond fast enough.

She is forced to look. Her new eyes don’t blink. They see. She sees. Raw muscle too big for its skin showing through in slashes of red. Sinew and veins. She wants to be sick but she’s losing control. Her emotions are overwhelming her senses and overtaking her motor functions. She can’t close her mouth and it hangs open and slavering, jaw unhinged like a snake.

The only remnants of Annie ( Little Annie. Quiet Annie. ) are her eyes and her hair. Blue eyes, deep-set and half-lidded. Blonde hair falling in soft locks to her shoulders.

_not mine not mine not mine_

When the initial shock wears off, she can close her eyes. She reminds herself of her father’s words: _“The titan isn’t you, Annie. It’s just a body. A machine to control. Never, ever forget."_

A machine. Only a machine. A tool to reap destruction. A vessel. It is easier to think of this… _machine_ …as a separate entity. Something she controls from afar. A puppet on strings made of tissue and nerves.

But who is guilty? The sword or its wielder?

_**STOP.** _

She stands unsteadily, holding the earth with her hands as meters-long legs scramble beneath her. This cannot happen again. She cannot let her emotions take over and impair her control. She must be measured and efficient. Not like the clumsy ingrates wandering the forests, devouring without purpose. _"They kill and destroy because they have no control. Their feelings robbed them of their minds,"_ her father had warned her. _"You control the titan, Annie. Precious Annie. Never let it control you."_

She forces herself to look now. Until her own image is burned in the back of her mind: fearsome and resplendent. Her machine made of flesh, built to fulfill a higher purpose.

She stares until her eyes lose focus. Until every hint of weakness is purged. She is a blank slate. A pilot with her machine. A machine with a purpose. A machine with free will.

When she returns home, she steals her mother’s hand mirror and looks at her face: nose and eyes and pale skin and thin lips. She gazes until her own reflection is all that’s left of her. A girl with big, sad eyes on a glass surface looking at a monster.

She falls asleep with the mirror in her hand.


End file.
